Pickle Crisp does work against you when doing sweet pickles with sugar added to the brine. Because Linda Lou's recipe uses a salt brine to essentially remove a lot of the water from the cukes, it leaves them open for the penetration of the vinegar and sugar. With the addition of the calcium chloride of Pickle Crisp, it will tend to break down the cukes a little and have a negative effect on crispness. Because the fermented salt brine method to making these unusual sweet pickles makes the cukes a bit less watery by its nature, they do act a little different when they are stored in sugar and vinegar. I don't think it would be the same if they were not sweetened with regular sugar, or if Splenda or some other artifical sweetener was used instead of sugar. My 32 ounce jar of bulk Calcium Chloride is almost 1/4 gone already. I use it ONLY for my dills, sweets without sugar, and my pepperoncini pickled peppers in full strength vinegar and salt. The pickling cukes actually suffer in taste and texture if you peel them, even for a fresh salad. Its not necessary for most any pickling cuke to be peeled. As to bitterness, it cannot be bred out of the cucumbers, no matter what they say about bitterless or burpless varieties. Usually it occurs early in the season when there are only a few flowers and the plant is not big yet. Once the cukes get into the summer growing season, they tend to be much more reliable and you will be hard pressed to find a bitter one then. Even for that, when I am picking early ones, I try to taste each cuke with a small slice near the stem end to see if it has any bitterness. If so, its tossed. There is nothing worse to throw off a nice jar of pickles if you come across a single slice (or slices) of a bitter cuke. No amount of vinegar, salt, sugar, or spices will hide its awful taste. I have had my share of bitter ones, and most have been from seeds that said they had no bitters.

I just make mine with my homemade pita or the storebought stuff. I know someone just asked this question too, in the last week or so, so it must be something in the air. LOL Anyway, I just split the pita into two rounds and cut the rounds into wedges, then brush with olive oil and sprinkle with salt or herbs or parmesant or whatever I like. An oil mister would be faster, probably, or you wouldn't have to put anything on them. Put them in the oven at 400F until they toast and they go quickly from "not toasted" to "charcoal" so watch them carefully. I do the same thing with whole wheat tortillas, equally yummy. Annie

I happened to have Food Tv on when I went to bed wayyy late last night and Alton Brown was making his own crispy onions. He did them in the oven. He sliced very finely, then tossed with a little flour and a little bit of panko, some salt, then put on a greased baking sheet in a 475 oven for 30 minutes, tossing them every ten minutes. They looked quite good. Ah, I found the recipe. Here it is. He used onions instead of shallots, but I'd sure love the shallots instead. Smiles. From Alton Browns Green Bean Casserole Ingredients For the topping: 2 medium onions, thinly sliced 1/4 cup all-purpose flour 2 tablespoons panko bread crumbs 1 teaspoon kosher salt Nonstick cooking spray Preheat the oven to 475 degrees F. Combine the onions, flour, panko and salt in a large mixing bowl and toss to combine. Coat a sheet pan with nonstick cooking spray and evenly spread the onions on the pan. Place the pan on the middle rack of the oven and bake until golden brown, approximately 30 minutes. Toss the onions 2 to 3 times during cooking. Once done, remove from the oven and set aside until ready to use.

I wanted to check back in to let y'all know that you really were spot on about the blackberry being the way to go! I made both the blackberry crisp & Mtnester's Martha Stewart apple-blueberry (thanks again for the recipe, Mtn!). Only my pregnant niece asked for apple-blueberry! The other 8 people asked for blackberry! So given the dwindling supply of blackberry, dh & I went for apple-blueberry, which was very, very good! (Niece had another serving!). We all had vanilla ice cream with our crisp. Thought it was interesting that when given a choice (sight unseen) blackberry was what almost everyone requested. I am glad I had a couple of options though, & it was good to try out another recipe to get some more experience with such things. (Hope each of you enjoyed a day that was merry & bright!). And...thanks, Sally! Yes, please call me Stinky!